Battle of La Suffel

The Battle of La Suffel (28 June 1815) was a battle of the Hundred Days campaign of the Napoleonic Wars, the last battle of the Napoleonic Wars that the army of the First French Empire would win. Jean Rapp's 20,000-strong French V Corps (also called the Army of the Rhine), which had defected to Emperor Napoleon I upon his return to France, was sent to defend the Vosges, and the 40,000-strong III Corps of the Upper Rhine Army of the Austrian Empire under Crown Prince Wilhelm of Wurttemberg met the French near Strasbourg at La Suffel. On the first day, the German and Austrian assaults on the French army were repelled, but the arrival of Russian reinforcements for the Coalition army forced Rapp to withdraw to Strasbourg. The mayor of Souffelweyersheim and 17 bourgeois townspeople were executed by the Austrians after the battle, but Crown Prince Wilhelm pardoned the other prisoners at the behest of Pastor Dannenberger.